Style for OS X Offers Prisma-Like Photo Effects on Your Mac

Independent developer MacDaddy has announced the release of their new photo and video effects app for the Mac, Style. The app offers nine different styling models to choose from, each creating a fascinating work of art from any photo or video.

Users simply drag and drop a photo or video into the app’s window, select a style, and click “Go.” The app doesn’t simply apply Instagram-like effects to a photo or video, but actually creates a “painted” interpretation of the source file.

Unlike Prisma, which still requires an internet connection to processes some of its effects, the app does all of its neural net processing on your Mac, so no internet connection is needed. The reimagining of images usually takes only a few moments to create, while videos take longer. Of course, all processing times are affected by the file size of the source file.

9 rendering models are available:

Candy – A hard candy style effect

Composition – A mosaic-like effect

Cubist – An effect resembling early-20th-century avant-garde art

Edtaonisl – A style created by early-20th-century artist Francis Picabia

Hokusai – A style created by early-19th-century Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai

Hundertwasser – A style created by artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser

Kandinsky – A style created by early-20th-century artist Wassily Kandinsky

Seurat – A Post-Impressionist style created by French painter Georges Seurat

Starrynight – An effect based on the famous “The Starry Night” painting by Vincent van Gogh

All nine models can be applied to a source image at once, resulting in nine separate images displaying all of the available effects. Users can also drag a previously rendered image back into the app, in order to apply a new effect over the top of the previous model, leading to some very interesting effects.

“I was admiring the cool effects the popular Prisma app offered iOS users, and I realized there wasn’t anything like that available for Mac users,” says MacDaddy CEO Ben Slaney. “That’s when I decided to create Style. However, I didn’t want users to have to be connected to the Internet just to process an image or a video, so I designed the app to do all of the processing directly on the Mac. No matter where the user is, they can have fun creating new interpretations of their favorite images!”

I’ve been playing with the beta for awhile now, and I really enjoy the app. It’s quite a bit of fun to see how the various models turn out with different kinds of images. My favorite models are the Kandinsky and Starrynight effects. Videos can also turn out to be a blast, as seen in the entertaining “Gangnam Style” Style demo video, seen below.

MacTrast Senior Editor, and self-described “magnificent bastard,” Chris Hauk owns Phoenix Rising Services and writes for everyone’s favorite “bad movie” website, Big Bad Drive-In. He lives somewhere in the deep Southern part of America. Yes, he has to pump in both sunshine and the Internet.